


Hold me tight in your arms, give me glimmers of hope

by heavenisalibrary



Series: Tumblr Prompt Fills [15]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Library Fix-It, i guess? i mean sort of unintentionally s'not the focal point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 10:17:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1506905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenisalibrary/pseuds/heavenisalibrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Idiot Time Lord,” she says, “buffeting around in that bigger-on-the-inside box with bigger-on-the-inside pockets and bigger-on-the-inside humans and hearts, and it never once occurred to you in all those years that <i>perhaps</i> our story was bigger on the inside, too?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold me tight in your arms, give me glimmers of hope

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: River/Twelve; He had always thought that his eleventh face had been her Doctor, but he'd been wrong.
> 
> I got derailed writing this so the beginning doesn't fit with the end. Obviously, also, we don't know Twelve yet so basically my understanding of Twelve is the fandom's slightly joking spec of Twelve which is to say Eleven + Malcolm Tucker? I have no idea.

This new regeneration has a predilection for saying filthy things none of his former selves would've dared — profanities taste round and soft on his tongue now, where his former self found them unwieldy. It's the sort of thing he knows River would've loved — but he hasn't seen her for months. She popped up twice after Trenzalore, but it was both times accidental. He'd crossed his own timeline, or she’d appeared in the TARDIS at the wrong time. He’d milked those moments as best he could, but he couldn’t let River know that she was long dead in his timeline, and so when she made to leave he could only stall her so long. But he hadn’t seen her with this face yet, and all he can think any time a profanity slips easily from between his lips is that River would’ve been positively _delighted_.

His previous self had grown accustomed to the sort of dirty talk River occasionally encouraged, and the Doctor would’ve even said he’d gotten good at it, but the Doctor was also sure that this face would be _exceptional_ at it. But he had no cause to find out — the Doctor had never really been a particularly sexual being. He had eyes and urges and there were times, naturally, when things crossed his mind, but like anything else, if left dormant too long it atrophied. It was only because River was the sort of woman who could seduce a monk that he’d been so aware of his sexuality in his last body — and he wasn’t just using the monk as hyperbole, either. River had seduced a monk, once, or twice, and he may or may not have been involved, once. Or twice.

He spends a lot of time reminding himself that River is gone. He knows there’s a possibility he’ll see her again, but he doesn’t look forward to that day because he’s sure she won’t recognize him, and if she doesn’t know this face then it’s well and truly over for him. Despite this, he spends a lot of time looking for her, too. He doesn’t admit that’s what he’s doing, even to himself, even when Clara rolls her eyes or wings a brow at him as he takes her to the camps of warrior queens and the courts of notoriously ruthless female monarchs and to the hometown of artists who claim to have a divine muse. He even drops in on a few archaeological conventions, listens to a few lectures, and tries very hard not to let Clara see him poring over the list of guest speakers. He has to try even harder not to let her see the disappointment when River isn’t on it.

Naturally, when he finally finds her, he isn’t looking.

He went off on his own that morning to a ball someone invited him to — he doesn’t really remember the inviter, honestly, but he meets a lot of people and is sure he’ll remember once he sees them — in a nice suit and a skinny tie that feels more _him_ this time than the bowtie, which sits in the center of the dresser in his room, and he’s thinking of leaving when he hears her laugh. He knows that laugh anywhere.

His eyes immediately find her in the center of the room, back to him. Her hair is pinned up on the top of her head in some kind of gold pin, a few curls escaping down the nape of her neck. Her dress is form-fitting — as though she wears anything else — and black, draping sinfully over her curves and revealing much of her back and her shoulders, as it’s held up by thin gold straps that glitter when she moves. He imagines that it must dip low in the front as well, and immediately rolls his eyes at the juvenile thought, even as he licks his lips at the mental image. He doesn’t even really feel excited at the prospect of seeing her, it’s so surreal — he starts toward her as she drifts away from the group of people she’s speaking to, and is about to reach out for her when he catches sight of his own hand and realizes that she won’t even recognize him.

He pushes down the heartache at the thought that this is the last time he’ll see her, the real, proper last time, and instead pauses to figure out how to approach this. He wants to just grab her and pull her into him and hug her for hours, or back her into a wall and snog her senseless without prelude, but he’s fairly sure she’d kill him with one hand if he did. He doesn’t want to fool her, act like they’re strangers before revealing who he is, and he doesn’t know the words to tell her, even though it’s so simple. He stands stupidly in the center of the ballroom for a moment, one hand slightly outstretched and slowly falling back into his body. She turns toward him then, but her eyes don’t nearly reach him — she’s eying something else with the sort of focus that would make him nervous if he wasn’t so distracted, and he just stares at her as she slowly walks in his direction. She’s beautiful. Absolutely incredible — her lips are a deep red, and her dress plunges exactly as he imagined. She moves with such grace that for a moment he’s struck speechless by his own wife, but then she’s a few feet to his left and nearly walking past him and she still hasn’t even seen him and his mouth still doesn’t quite feel right and all that comes out is —

“You look fucking incredible,” he says, wincing as soon as it’s out of his mouth. She turns toward him sharply, her mouth open slightly as she gives him a once over before it curves into a smile and she starts toward him. He thinks that he’s probably going to die, and like it a lot more than he should, and all he can think about is another ball they attended when she was still in University and terribly young and reckless and tempting, and they’d been thrown in prison for public indecency and before he can stop himself and his terrible mouth, he adds, “I could just eat you up.”

She stops when she’s chest to chest with him, and his previous regeneration would’ve flailed and tripped over himself at the look in her eye, and he flinches when she reaches up to press a palm to the side of his face. He closes his eyes and cringes, expecting a slap, but instead —

“You’d better, honey,” she says, “or else I wore these incredibly uncomfortable shoes for nothing.”

His eyes shoot open and he gapes at her as she leans up a bit to press a quick kiss to his lips. He’s so startled that he doesn’t even respond. He doesn’t even reach out to touch her like he’s been longing to do for years — all he can do is stare. She raises a brow.

“You — you know who I am?” he manages finally, his voice high and thin.

“Of course,” she says. Then, worried: “do you know who _I_ am?”

“I’m not in the habit of complimenting women who aren’t my wife,” he says immediately, a bit riled by her insinuation. She smirks.

“I suppose that qualifies as a compliment,” she says, “although really, it was more of a catcall.”

“Was not!”

“‘I could just eat you up’?” she says. “You just yelled that across a room!”

“I did not _yell_ ,” he says.

“You did a bit,” she says. “So mouthy in this regeneration. I know I’ve said it before and I do hate complimenting you — your ego is insufferable as is — but I _love_ it.”

Her words bring him back to the reality of the situation — falling into banter with her is as easy as breathing, and he blinks, realizing that she shouldn’t know this face at all. He hasn’t a clue where she is in her timeline, or what’s happening, but he’s suddenly acutely aware that his hand has come to rest on the small of her back, pulling her slightly into him, and she presses a kiss to the underside of his jaw as he swallows.

“You’ve met this regeneration before?” he asks.

“Yes, sweetie,” she says, “I should’ve thought that was obvious.”

“ _River_ ,” he says, and his voice is strangled. She looks up at him with a bit of concern, wrapping an arm around his neck to run her fingers soothingly through the short hair at the nape of his neck. “When _are_ you? Do you have your diary?”

She backs up from him slightly to look down at her own dress. “In _this_?”

“Well then how do we —”

“I’m post-diary, honey,” she says, “we’re mostly linear nowadays, though it’s a bit delightful to stumble upon a you _this_ young. You’ve never seen me with this face?”

“Mostly — _linear_?”

“Oh, sweetie,” she coos, moving closer to him again and kissing the tip of his nose. “You didn’t think our story could really end, did you?”

“I — I — I —”

She cuts him off, kissing him, and it all sinks in very abruptly then — River is here, older than he’s ever seen her, and very much alive, and very much acquainted with this face, and there’s more to their lives than what’s contained in those little blue books and he nearly sobs into her mouth, lurching toward her and wrapping his arms around her and kissing her like his life depends on it. She feels and tastes exactly like he remembers. She wraps her arms around his neck, and he presses his arms more tightly against the small of her back, leaning back slightly and lifting her off the ground. She yelps, pulling away from him to laugh breathlessly as he spins her around before setting her down and kissing her again — he presses her lips apart with his tongue, running it along the roof of her mouth in the way that she loves and nipping her upper lip and sucking her lower lip into his mouth. He presses a few glancing kisses to her mouth, then to the corner, then down around her jaw and down her throat, before he hauls her to him once more and buries his face in her neck, breathing her in, trying to fill himself full of her — his hearts pound in his chest and if she feels his tears against her neck she doesn’t mention it, just rubs his back gently and presses a kiss to his temple as he moves to stand. He frames her face in his hands and beams down at her.

“Are you really, properly real? Not just a projection or a data ghost or —”

“Properly real, my love,” she says. 

“And you’ve seen this face before?”

“This one, and others,” she says, nodding. “Many, many times.”

“How many is many?”

“ _Many_ ,” she says. He laughs brightly, pressing a smacking kiss to her lips and she rolls her eyes at him, smacking his shoulder. “Doctor, we’re in a room full of people! Get a hold of yourself.”

She acts like he’s embarrassing her, but he’s embarrassed her many times before and _this_ is not her embarrassed face. This is her pleasantly flushed, secretly delighted face. He kisses her again for good measure.

“I just — I can’t _believe_ — _how_? I thought I’d — I thought I’d seen it all. My beginning, yours. Both our endings.”

She laughs, reaching down to entwine her fingers with his and lifting his hand to kiss the back of it.

“Idiot Time Lord,” she says, “buffeting around in that bigger-on-the-inside box with bigger-on-the-inside pockets and bigger-on-the-inside humans and hearts, and it never once occurred to you in all those years that _perhaps_ our story was bigger on the inside, too?”


End file.
